How we judge beer in Norway

The state of the Norwegian beer scene never ceases to amaze me, and
given that I'm a native Norwegian, I thought international readers
might enjoy a look at what goes on here. If nothing else, it might
have some entertainment value. The occasion for this blog entry is a
beer test, initially published by a
Norwegian magazine about cottages (as in summer houses, mountain
retreats, etc). This magazine is owned by the media conglomerate Schibsted, which
also publishes the main Norwegian
daily, and so the test has now made its way onto the
site of said daily. So the unwary reader could be forgiven for
assuming that it was published by the most prestigious newspaper in
Norway.

The premise of the test is that the reviewer has found that the
Norwegian Wine Monopoly sells not just wine, but also beer, in
"exciting" bottles. And so he has picked from six beers from
"recognized beer nations like England, Belgium, Japan, and Norway".
Norway is a recognized beer nation? Really? But let us put this down
to an excess of national patriotism, and not quibble about the
presence of Japan in the list, because, as we will find, there is more
than enough else to complain about.

The reviewer then notes, apparently with some surprise, that the
beer needs special treatment. For example, it has to be served at the right temperature. And some of it needs to
stand still before serving to let the sediments settle. Already at
this point certain reservations about the competence of the reviewer
arise in the mind of readers with some basic knowledge of beer, but at
least the reviewer has found this out before starting the test.

It's when we get to the beer reviews themselves that the article
really gets interesting. For each beer some basic data is given (ABV,
price, food pairings), a little background about it, the review, and a
score from 1-6 (with 6 as the best).

Hoegaarden Wit

Let's start with the last beer: Hoegaarden Wit. As any beer
enthusiast knows, this is a very highly esteemed world classic. In
fact, this is the beer which revived the style, so that all the wit
beers currently brewed were inspired by this single beer. A simplified
estimate based on the RateBeer database tells me there must be at
least 1000 such beers. Nothing in the article indicates that the
reviewer has any awareness of any of these facts.

In fact, the reviewer is shocked on discovering that the beer is
cloudy, and compares it to "a dodgy urine sample". That wit beers are
supposed to be cloudy is something he appears to be blithely
unaware of. He goes on to say that it "doesn't smell as bad, but is
very bitter". (The reviewer uses two different words in Norwegian, but
they both mean bitter.) That's it. That's the entire review. What the
reviewer has to say about aroma and taste can be boiled down to two
simple assertions: "doesn't smell bad", "is bitter".

Unfortunately for the reviewer, this is one of the least bitter
beers you can find. This, in fact, is why it tends to be quite popular
among women, and why it's often recommended as a starter beer for
people who want to try something other than pilsener. And in fact the
beer is less bitter than the average pilsener.

The reviewer then gives the beer the lowest score: 1. On RateBeer,
out of 1961 reviewers, only 6 reviewers give it less than 1 on a scale
from 5.0 to 0.5. In fact, RateBeer places 88% of the registered 70,000
beers below this one based on these 1961 ratings. So the reviewer's
low opinion does not appear to be very widely shared, to put it
mildly.

Leffe Brune

Wort beer

This is the main Belgian-style brand of the huge brewing
conglomerate that just bought Budweiser. In order words, this is not a
minor beer in terms of sales, and while it's by no means considered
one of the best Belgian-style beers, it's certainly considered one of
the easiest to drink, and a good place to start to explore this part
of the beer world.

Our reviewer thinks this "smells little". Actually, Leffe Brune
has quite a lot of aroma. However, our reviewer tells us that he's
kept these beers in the fridge for a half a day before pouring them.
So maybe it was too cold? Or maybe the reviewer just doesn't have much
of a sense of smell? This last theory sounds rather plausible, as he
goes on to write that the beer has "an unidentifiable taste". Apart
from noting that the beer is dark (big surprise, given the name),
that's the entire substance of the review. Another oddity is that he
compares the colour to that of wort beer (basically unfermented beer),
which is an extremely obscure beer type. Is wort beer the only dark
type of beer the reviewer is familiar with?

So this time around we got "smells little", "is dark", and
"unidentifiable taste". The first of these is wrong, the second stated
in the name of the beer, and the third is a statement about the
ignorance of the reviewer, and not a statement about the beer.

He then proceeds to give it a 1. Out of 678 RateBeer reviewers,
none have given this beer less than 1.

Asahi Super Dry

This is rather an odd beer to include on the list of six beers to
review, since it's the only pale lager. This is Asahi's main export
brand, and best described as a clean-tasting pale lager with a bare
minimum of spiciness and maltiness in the taste. It's not entirely
tasteless, but definitely a very bland beer. Checking RateBeer again,
picking the first reviews that show up (and only the ones from people
with more than 10 ratings), I get "boring" (#1), "inoffensive" (#2),
"crisp" (#3), "plain" (#4), "nice" (#5), and so on.

Our reviewer offers that it "smells like pilsener" (by which he
means pale lager). Which is an astute observation, given that a pale
lager is exactly what this is. It also "looks like a pilsener".
Again, nobody could deny it. However, as nobody could fail to make
precisely this observation, it is not a terribly interesting
statement. "Nice head." Sure. "Tastes almost nothing." And here we
have a first: the reviewer has made a statement which is both correct
and non-obvious! He then adds "and is really parching dry. Like
paper. Yes, like drinking paper from the copy machine." Right. While
the beer certainly has a slight crisp driness, describing it as
"parching dry" is just wildly inaccurate. It's not much drier than the
average Norwegian pale lager. (We'll pass over how you drink paper,
whether paper really is almost entirely tasteless, and other such
difficult questions.)

So, to summarize again, we are offered "smells like pale lager",
"looks like pale lager", "nice head", "tastes almost nothing", and
"parching dry". So out of 5 statements, three are blindingly obvious,
one is wrong, and one is (wonder of wonders!) correct.

He hands out a score of 1 again. This time, out of 699 RateBeer
reviewers, 21 agree with him. So while he's still in a very small
minority, at least this time the minority has members other than
himself.

Chimay Bleu

Dark beer

Again, with the unerring precision of a sleepwalker, our reviewer
has picked another world classic for review. This time a beer that
really is brewed by monks, and one which for many years has been
considered one of the high points of Belgian brewing. In fact, this
beer is powerful enough to age, and some places
they will sell you vintage bottles dating back to the early 80s.

Our reviewer observes that the beer is "nearly black". In fact,
it's not entirely opaque black, and you can see dark brown light
through it if you know how to do it. So not bad for this reviewer.
"Smells little". This time, the blame cannot be put on the fridge, as
at 9% alcohol with top-fermentation and spices this beer has a
powerful aroma. This statement is just flat wrong. "The taste is
nauseating." Well. I suppose this beer can be rather overpowering for
those who find even Hoegaarden too dry, but even so this is not a very
useful piece of information. It makes the reviewer nauseous. Ok, but
why? Is it the sweetness? Is it the alcohol? Is it the shock on being
exposed to a beer that really, definitively tastes rather a lot? Hard
to say, and the reviewer offers little in the way of hints. He winds
up by describing the beer as "filling". That is, it's like a dish that
makes you feel full even when you have eaten little of it.

So, to summarize: "nearly black", "smells little", "taste is
nauseating", and "filling". That's one right (if rather obvious), one
wrong, and two statements that are mostly about the reviewer.

And what score does the reviewer assign to this beer, which based
on 2112 RateBeer reviews is better than 99% of the beers in the world,
and which
Michael
Jackson gave four stars out of four? That's right.
He gives it a 1.

The other reviews

Our reviewer also covered Små Vesen Kvernknurr (1), Nøgne Ø Amber
Ale (3), and Samuel Smith Imperial Stout (4), without doing much
better. His reviews can be summarized as follows: Kvernknurr, "fresh
aroma", "filling"; Nøgne Ø Amber, "tastes caramel", "filling"; Samuel
Smith Imperial Stout, "pleasant aroma", "tastes of malts", "filling".
So again most statements are either nonsensical, wrong, or
uninformative. The "fresh aroma" and "tastes of malts", which while
certainly not wrong, are still rather low on informational content,
are as good as it gets.

Conclusion

Lagerboy

Overall, the reviewer scores very low indeed on precision and
informational content. The beer he does best on is Asahi Super Dry,
which does tend to confirm the suspicion that he is unused to anything
besides industrial pale lager. It seems fair to conclude that the
reviewer has very little knowledge of beer beyond the industrial pale
lager that is what Norwegians mostly drink. However, he has at least
seen a wort beer (which, had he tasted it, he would almost
certainly have considered very "filling" indeed). In fact, it doesn't
seem too much of a stretch to conclude that he has found the
experience of drinking beers with more than a minimum of taste to be
something of a shock.

We can also conclude that the reviewer is more or less unable to
describe the taste of beer. He can only find one or two words to
describe each beer, and he often gets these words wrong. In fact, it's
hard to avoid the impression that he hasn't really tried to describe
these beers. Phrases like "dodgy urine sample" and "copy paper" rather
suggest that the purpose here has more been to ridicule these beers
than to review them in any serious way.

And this is what I find the most galling about this review. In
Norway there is exactly one newspaper
which writes about beer from the point of view of taste, and this is a
small regional newspaper. In all other newspapers, beer is fizzy
yellow stuff which should be as cheap as possible, and if there is
anything beyond that to say about it it will be the mergers of huge
industrial breweries or, at best, interesting pubs covered in travel
articles.

Not long ago, for example, Aftenposten.no had an article about where to
find the cheapest beer in New York. New York has fantastic
selection of beer pubs, with selections beyond the wildest dreams of
the citizens of nearly all European cities. But in Norwegian
newspapers the focus is on finding cheap Budweiser, or at best Pabst
Blue Ribbon. Who would write an article about where to find the
cheapest wine in Paris?

Of course, the paper version of Aftenposten does carry a weekly
column about wine, which to me seems competently written, and
certainly far more serious than this so-called "test". This is more
than a little odd for a country with millennia of beer tradition, and
no wine production, but there you are. The idea has stuck in the minds
of most Norwegians that wine is culture and refinement, while beer is
cheap alcohol, and when confronted with beers which really are more
than just cheap alcohol, the best our journalists can offer is "looks
like a dodgy urine sample".

Another embaressing display of Norwegian beer culture. One would think that Norwegian traditions (pale lagers are a recent invention considering our long history) would merit better beer knowledge and appreciation, but alas. The strong beers being forced into the Vinmonopolet is one reason for its decline, and shitty journalism about it is another. And you would think there would be a strong mead culture somewhere here, but no dice. Bizarre.

There's been an upswing in beer interest here in Norway the last few years (mostly through a better selection of ... um, pale lagers) and hopefully it will sprinkle some interest in non-lagers, Norwegian and not. Hey, I even spotted Pilsner Urquell at my local Rimi the other day, which at least is a pilsner with taste and a sense of decency ...

that article has not one iota of accurate information in it. and what's even worse is that people who read it are going to believe it not knowing any better.

Gahr - 2008-08-21 09:20:53

If ignorance is bliss, this guy surely is a happy camper.

Jos Brouwer - 2008-08-23 18:27:30

Just send an e-mail to the author, and awaiting reactions:

Per,

You may already have seen the blog at http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/175.html
I completely agree with this blogger, I think your knowledge about beer is mere bullshit.
Learn something about beer, before writing about it.
Or stick to spoilt grapejuice, others refer to it as wine. And spread nonsense about that. I don't care about that, but please use the same nonsensical bullshit (it's good they put sulfate in it, to prevent further spoiling) for that.

And - oh yes, I do know a little bit about beer. I'm an international beer judge.

In fairness, those reviews sound a lot like some of my early blog posts...

Lojosang - 2008-08-27 16:24:59

You did not get paid to do those early blog posts though, did you?

Are Gulbrandsen - 2008-08-28 03:11:39

This must clearly be a case of a journalist who wanted free beer. But making a complete fool out of himself and his newspaper like this will certainly have a much greater cost that the actual cost of the beer, about 300 NOK.